A faction of Burma's pro-democracy opposition movement said today that it will form a new political party to contest this year's elections.

The announcement came a day after the forced dissolution of the National League for Democracy, which won Burma's last election in 1990 but was prevented from taking power by the army.

The League declined to register for this year's vote, claiming that new election laws were unfair and undemocratic. Its non-registration was tantamount to an election boycott.

However, a group of League members who disagreed with the boycott said they would form their own party, the National Democratic Force.

"We will form a new political party to continue our struggle for democracy and human rights," said Khin Maung Swe, a former senior member of the League and a former political prisoner.

Whether the League's erstwhile leader Aung San Suu Kyi would play any role in the new party was not immediately clear, but it appears unlikely. She has called the junta's election laws undemocratic and said she would not think of registering her party for the polls.

Khin Maung Swe said he had suggested the idea of forming a "lifeboat party" to enable the League to circumvent the dissolution. "The idea was not accepted," he said.

He said the new party would register with the election commission this month. The law that imposed a registration deadline of 6 May applied only to existing political parties.

Than Nyein, who is expected to serve as the new party's chairman, said: "We are going to continue our unending democratic struggle within the legal framework."

On Thursday, officials at the National League for Democracy tidied their desks and locked files at their main office in Rangoon, a quiet end to a political party founded more than 20 years ago to challenge military rule.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years, was convicted last year of illegally harboring a US visitor who swam uninvited to her lakeside home.

The government has not yet announced a date for the upcoming elections, which will be the first in two decades. The elections have been widely criticised as a sham designed to cement military rule.